Business Excellence Consortium

Building Your Zebra

What in the world is a Zebra?

A Zebra is a prospective customer that is an ideal fit for your company - not just a product or solution seeker. It is that prospect you know you can win based on identifiable, objective characteristics. These are the only prospects your salespeople should be pursuing!

During this one-day workshop, participants will engage in a lively, two-way exchange in which they will learn about and apply the Business Zebra - a profile of the perfect sales prospect. Each attendee will create and leave with an electronic Excel spreadsheet version of their Business Zebra - a strawman Zebra. This tool will help quantify the fit of your company's best sales prospects.

Participants will learn what it means to have a Zebra score of 23, and how that score translates into highly predictable revenue. Existing Zebra users have become so proficient with their Business Zebra that they can predict, with 90% accuracy, the prospects that will close in a given quarter.

This proven approach allows companies to focus their limited sales and marketing resources where they will be realizing the greatest economic benefit through:

• eliminating chasing those deals that won't, or shouldn't, be won
• shortening the sales cycle
• increasing the size of your deals
• and reducing discounting through focusing on where you have a true, measureable competitive advantage.

Note: A laptop computer is required for this workshop. In addition, it is highly recommend that attendees read Selling to Zebras, HOW to CLOSE 90% of the BUSINESS YOU PURSE FASTER, MORE EASILY and MORE PROFITABLY by Jeff Koser and Chad Koser.

What will be covered:

• Defining and creating the profile of your ideal prospective customer - your ZEBRA
• The seven attributes or components needed to build your Zebra and how they help your Zebra score
• Testing your Zebra - applying the Zebra to a recent sale you won and a recent sale you lost; demonstrating the importance of the Zebra score
• Learning how to leverage your Zebra for every potential sale - at a glance - so you will know how to proceed and where to apply caution.

Who should attend?

Executives including executive and senior vice presidents, sales and marketing directors and managers, and account executives and managers.

Upon completion, you will:

• have developed a spreadsheet version of your Business Zebra

• be able to predict with increasing accuracy the sales opportunities you can turn into revenue
• realize the more you identify and chase Zebras the faster deals in your pipeline will turn into revenue, the less discounting will be required to close business, the larger your deals will become, and the faster your business will grow!

About the instructor:

Jeff Koser is an award-winning author (Selling to Zebras), who offers more than thirty years of experience in speaking, consulting, executive sales management, business strategy, and business development in various industries. His current consulting customers range from Global 2000 companies to pre-IPO companies aspiring to do a liquidity event. Using the Zebra sales methodology, chronicled in Selling to Zebras, Jeff has established a proven track record of successfully helping companies increase sales and reduce the cost of sales. Companies, of all sizes from emerging to mature markets, in a variety of industries, have enjoyed Zebra-initiated sales success. 

Previously, Jeff served as Chief Operating Officer at Baan Supply Chain Solutions. Under his leadership at Baan, revenues grew more than tenfold in fewer than five years. Prior to joining Baan, Jeff held various management and sales positions at companies such as NCR Corporation, MAI Basic Four, and Xerox Computer Services.